Geithner not expected to stay for second Obama term

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner predicted during a Wednesday interview with Bloomberg Television that a different financial overseer will be there to serve President Obama if he should win a second term.

“He’s not going to ask me to stay on, I’m pretty confident,” Geithner said. “I’m confident he’ll be president. But I’m also confident he’s going to have the privilege of having another secretary of the Treasury.”

Geithner backed up the president call during his State of the Union address Tuesday night for higher tax rates on profits from private equity investments, saying there is “a lot of support for trying to do that.”

“It serves a basic principle of fairness in this context,” he added. “So we’re going to work to doing that. But we’re going to try to go beyond that, too, because just doing that is not enough.”

In the wide-ranging interview, Geithner also downplayed the impact of Dodd–Frank financial regulations on the Wall Street economy.

“I would not worry too much about them,” Geithner offered. “I would worry more about the basic confidence of Americans that they’re going to face more opportunities, more likely to find a job, keep a job, save for college, save for a dignified retirement.”

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Geithner, the former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, has drawn flak from both the left and the right for his handling of bank bailouts under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.